Edgar Said:

Could you help my friend win the Doritos ad competition?

We Answered:

sure will. anything 4 u

Eleanor Said:

John McCain paid $175,000- voter registration fraud ?

We Answered:

Its hysterical that McCain/Palin are guilty of everything they've accused Barack Obama of being during this campaign.

Now to top it off, McCain gets the endorsement of Al Qaeda!

You couldnt write it any better than that.

Gladys Said:

What happens if you lie about your nationality in your voter registration (UK)?

We Answered:

In the UK (and in many countries), it is considered a criminal offence to intentionally provide false information on any official government form, and that includes the electoral registration form.

I doubt you would go to jail for giving wrong info, unless of course it was done to commit fraud. For example, if you tried to collect funds that only a true UK citizen is allowed to apply for, or tried to vote in a county that you were not legally allowed to do.

But you can (and will) certainly be investigated and potentially face fines once they find out you are NOT a UK citizen.

For the purpose of obtaining a better credit score or credit margin, I would not do this...there are better alternatives.

When I was applying for a line of credit, my bank manager advised me that the bank requires a certain number of points to qualify, and I was missing only a few points.

Because I was a good customer who had been with them many years, what she did was opened a new account for me in my name, transferred in some cash, then withdrew the cash and closed the account. This extra transaction gave me the required points to qualify for the line of credit.

My advice is to sit down and talk with your bank manager and see if they can help you out.

Franklin Said:

How can I vote in EU parliament election (from the UK)?

We Answered:

call your local electoral registration office, you can find the number, and a load of other info, here: http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/

They should be able to answer any questions and tell you what you need to do to register to vote.

Patrick Said:

There seems to be a huge issue around voter registration in the US - why? [US responses only please]?

We Answered:

Wow, there's actually a number of controversies around voter registration - it's a bit hard to know where to begin.

The basic requirement is that the voter be a US citizen (BTW: I think in Australia any resident, regardless of citizenship, is required to vote). After that, though, it gets messy. Each state has its own registration procedure, but it is not required that anyone register or that they vote.

In some states, you must register at least 30 days before an election. In others, you can register the very same day as you vote. And there are all kinds of variations in between.

In general, at least recently, Democrats have been registering many more new voters, and Democrats already outnumber Republicans by millions (I am not sure of the precise numbers, but Google is ... ).

This, naturally, makes Republicans nervous. And so they fight back - generally by trying to disenfranchise (block from voting) these new voters.

Largely, the Republican party is a party of fairly well off white people. They often register young and vote faithfully.

In contrast, many of the new Democrats are immigrants and the poor.

And so, Republicans try to intimidate immigrant voters to scare them away from the polls - with tactics like having lawyers or government representatives oversee the polling places. The Republicans claim this is to prevent fraudulent votes by non-citizens, but the effect - and they know this - is to make newly naturalized Americans nervous, and to decrease their turn out.

Scaring away poor minority voters has a much longer history than the fear of illegal immigrant voters. It goes back to the period after the civil war. In order to prevent African Americans from voting, practices like literacy tests and 'poll taxes' were instituted. Eventually the courts found that these were illegal measures, and they were abolished.

But Republicans have found new ways ...
For the 2000 election in Florida, for instance, the Republican state government went through the voting roles and removed a lot (tens of thousands) of people they said were felons - people convicted of serious crimes - who generally lose their right to vote. The problem was that they were not careful about who they removed, and so they took off a lot of people who had similar names (names like, say, James Washington) but who were not criminals - the goal and the effect was to block and intimidate African Americans from voting, yet again. And this took votes from the Democrats.

This election, the Republicans tried to have every one of the more than 660,000 new voters in Ohio vetted for fraud. The goal: remove new Democrats from the roles. The Supreme Court blocked the effort - which is actually a pleasant surprise because that Court is very Republican.

And of course, there's ACORN. They have submitted 1,300,000 new registrations, mostly of poor and minority voters who can be predicted to vote Democratic. And so, of course, Republicans are rabidly ranting that these are a massive campaign of voter fraud - and yet there is no evidence of that in the least.

It is important to note that surveys show these tactics prevent legitimate voters from voting, and that fraud is nearly non-existent. Really, it is a serious crime to show up and say you are someone else and cast a second ballot, and everyone knows this and so it almost never happens.

There are so many controversies in all this - and most are totally synthetic. They are simply created by Republican lies to drive likely Democratic votes away from the polls. The controversies involve having Justice Department reps at the polls, removing new voters form the rolls, asserting fraud when there is none, removing the names of people when they are not criminals, etc.

A couple of final points:

It has recently come to light that the Bush administration has used the Justice Department for illicit partisan politics. Believe me that this is not allowed. An attourney, Bradley Schlozman, specifically developed a plan to intimidate and block minority voters (Google is your friend). I was shocked to read about this, but on the other hand it is par for that party.

And It is against Justice Department rules to disclose election investigations right before elections, and not only did Schlozman do that in 2006, but the Department just did it again with regards to ACORN. Dirty - and maybe even illegal - tactics (Google: Conyers, Justice Department leak).

And lastly: note that the efforts to register voters are by the Democrats, and the efforts to block them - over and over - are by Republicans.

It makes me sick that one party sees democracy as a game in which to out manuever their opponents to stop voting.

Is that democratic? Republicans don't care!

So there you have it, controversies galore ... and always being created and pubicized by but one side in order to prevent vote for the other.

PS: A bonus story:
During the primaries, as the battle between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama lengthened, Republican radio show hosts started telling their listeners to switch voter registrations to Democrat and to vote in the Democratic primaries. The goal: to vote for the candidate who was behind in the primary race so that the race, and the arguments between Democrats, would be extended.

Again, I was shocked by the attitude that Republicans showed where no tactic was too low for them to try. I mean purposely voting in the other party's election for a candidate you don't like in order to interfere with that election? Disgusting ... and yet, no Republican leader spoke up to condemn the radio shows for their anti-democratic tactics.